


Who You Are in the Dark

by Ael_tRlailiiu



Series: Black Swans [2]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2012-10-02
Packaged: 2017-11-14 12:45:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ael_tRlailiiu/pseuds/Ael_tRlailiiu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A terrorist organization is taking down the North American power grid in their efforts to open trans-planetary portals. The Avengers investigate and are shunted to a distant planet that has its own dangers. The team must find their way home, while those they have left behind cope with the disaster and battle those responsible. </p><p>Contains genre-appropriate violence and unexpected amounts of Bruce Banner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Deus ex Natura

**Author's Note:**

> Comes after Precious and Fragile Things, but there is no need to read that one in order to follow this. Bad Latin and spurious physics is entirely my fault.

The night turned green and white, like they were inside a ball of lightning. The Quinjet bucked. Clint fought the controls, steadied them for a second. He heard Natasha's voice, calm and measured. _Came out of nowhere. Strong atmospheric disturbance. No damage._

It felt as if something just picked up the plane and threw it. All he could do was try to keep them nose up and hope, flying blind until the light died, the wind fell away, and everything went back to normal except for the rapidly dropping altimeter. He hauled on the stick and had barely enough time for a syllable of warning before they hit something that hadn't been there thirty seconds before.

By then, the power had been out across most of the eastern US for five days.

*

Mid-August in Manhattan is why they invented the Hamptons, but society was making an exception this Friday evening for the first Avengers public event since the invasion.

“Whose idea was this again?” Steve asked. The press conference had wrapped up. Packs of journalists flung themselves at the free food. Socialites and politicians crowded the game tables and smiled for the cameras.

“I have no idea, but I'll make sure they get a raise,” Tony said.

“I'm not sure about this.”

“Nothing wrong with a little post-cleanup celebrating. Manhattan's open for business, and so are we. Well, business and occasional world-saving. Want to learn how to count cards?”

“It's for charity, we're not supposed to _win_. It just seems risky. Gambling. I know it's legal now, but....”

“The Mob is dead. Promise. Also, half of these people are undercover SHIELD.” He spotted a gaggle of Pepper's art people. “Come on, Captain Wallflower.” He hauled Steve along by main force, amused by the other man's reluctance. Field of battle—no problem. Press conference—fine. Arguments with Nick Fury—Steve thrived on those. Put him in formal wear, and apparently all bets were off. So to speak. Tony crashed the group with a flurry of handshakes and said, “This is Steve Rogers. Introduce yourselves. Have fun.” He left them staring at each other in mutual shock and headed for the bar. He only got halfway there before being hailed.

“Mr. Stark.”

Tony turned around. “Ms. Everhart. Always a pleasure.” He couldn't help but look around to see if something horrible was happening elsewhere in the room. It probably wasn't Christine's fault that she was his personal harbinger of doom. Probably.

“You don't appear to be playing.” She nodded at the gathering.

“We just got here. There's plenty of time.”

“It's certainly an... interesting move on your part, opening your building to this effort.”

“Thank you.” He gave her his best bland smile.

“Any chance of a comment from you about the current energy situation, the rolling blackouts here and on the west coast?”

“That's an awfully tame subject for you.”

“Not my fault you've gotten so dull.”

He looked at her over his sunglasses. “I can blow something up, if you'd like.”

“They've just got the city put back together.” She smiled, thin and professional. “All I want is a comment, Mr. Stark.”

“We've got a growing population, rising standards of living, falling stocks of fossil fuels, and it's mysteriously getting hotter on this rock every year. Quelle surprise, brownouts. Pick up a sales brochure on your way out and call me during business hours. Boring question, boring answer.”

“How about the VHE movement?”

“The what?”

“Voluntary human extinction? The answer, some would say, to all of the above problems. They've aimed a few shots in your direction lately, in case you hadn't noticed.”

“It's a free country.” And some people are fucking _weird_. “If you'll excuse me? Enjoy your evening.”

Christine frowned, but stalked off in search of more entertaining prey.

The rest of the team seemed to be doing all right. Jane Foster not being cut out for the spotlight, Pepper had volunteered to be Thor's escort and cultural translator; the two of them held court near the lobby fountain. Natasha and Clint were treating the evening as a mission; he looked very 007, and in that dress no one was going to remember her face.

Bruce, however, was nowhere to be seen. Drink forgotten, Tony did a circuit to make sure he hadn't just stepped out.

Well, damn.

*

This was as good a time as any to go. The media were focused on the rest of the team; the world at large still had very little idea of who Bruce Banner was. He slipped away from the crowd with no trouble and went up to his rooms. Other than a bunch of printouts and journals, those were still blank and bare as the day he had moved in. He changed his clothes, picked up his duffel bag, turned around and froze.

Tony stood leaning against the door frame, direly out of place in his full-on elegant public mode. Bruce was never sure if he ought to feel guilty about his own tiny flash of resentment at the sight.

“Don't,” Bruce started to say.

“I'm not. I do have one thing.” He straightened up and tossed something small in Bruce's direction.

Bruce caught it and found a thin metal disk about the size of a nickel attached to what looked like leather cord but wasn't. “What's this?” The metal had some give to it, between his fingers, a hint of flex that said something might happen if he squeezed it.

Tony's expression was difficult to read behind his preposterous violet sunglasses. “It won't do anything at all unless you activate it. Long short long to do that, and it will pulse out your location hourly. You can click Morse or binary. Yes, it's encrypted, don't give me that look. It talks to the Tower and to no one else. I don't stop people from doing things, but you should have the _option_ to get in touch. If something comes up. Because, you know, we do this stuff.”

There were an awful lot of things Bruce could have said. He could have explained that it wasn't the team, wasn't anything anyone had done, certainly wasn't Tony. It wasn't even SHIELD, or anything at all that he could put a finger on, just a growing sense of pressure and the certainty that it had to break soon or he would. Too many times he had woken up in the night with his heart racing. He needed space, needed time to figure out what was going on inside his own head, what he was doing here.

He didn't say any of that. He gave the cord an experimental stretch and found that it ought to accommodate even the Hulk's wrist.

“Thanks.”

“Good luck.” Tony hesitated, then made a vague little gesture that stood in for the whole unspoken conversation and walked away, like he was trying to prove that he _could so_ be tactful.

Bruce watched him go. He tucked the disk and cord into his pocket, shouldered his bag, and headed out. There were a thousand cabs prowling around the front of the Tower, but he didn't want to leave such an obvious trail, so he walked a few blocks through the liquid night and flagged one down.

“Where to?” The driver, a woman twice Bruce's size, glanced at him in the mirror.

He flipped a coin and said, “Penn Station.” If he didn't know where he was going, neither would anyone else. The radio informed him that he might get addicted to a certain kind of sadness. “Could you put on the game?”

*

Tony weighed telling the others and decided it could wait until after the party, though he did draw Pepper aside for a moment. She looked downcast but unsurprised.

“He'll come back,” she said.

She was better at people than he was, so he tried to believe her. She kissed him lightly before she went back to chaperoning Thor. At least one camera caught the kiss.

A little after one a.m., as things began winding down, someone looked outside and said, “Hey, all the lights are out.”

They opened up a couple of the higher floors so the last guests could look at the darkness surrounding them. The night was heavily overcast, and without city lights to reflect was like a black cotton blanket. Headlights picked out the streets, boat lights sparkled on the water, and here and there a generator must be working, but (clean, green, self-powered) Avengers Tower was the only significant light for miles.

“Somebody had better take a picture of this,” Pepper said. “I think the ad campaign just wrote itself.”

“It's kind of pretty.” Tony put an arm around her and admired the view.

“Friends! This evening has been great success, I think.” Thor loomed, even when he wasn't trying to.

“Absolutely,” Pepper said. “Not a single fight.”

“That is a pity, but still—an enjoyable entertainment. I much appreciate your courtesy in assisting my navigation throughout.”

“It was my pleasure. I'll leave you to your talk and see the last of them out downstairs.”

“We have matters to discuss, then?” Thor looked at Tony.

“Afraid so. Let me round up the rest of the gang.” That took only a few moments, since everyone else was up there, taking a look at the dark city around what was slowly becoming their home—Thor was staying full-time since his return, Clint had graduated to sleeping there more often than he slept anywhere else, and Natasha had installed a toothbrush. Steve still had his little apartment and probably always would, but he spent more and more of his time at the Tower, if only because it was where he could usually find the rest of them.

“Bruce left,” Tony said once they were all there.

“What? When?” Steve asked.

“Earlier this evening.”

Steve's brows twisted into a frown. “You should have said something sooner, I'd—”

“What, would have handcuffed him to his bed? He wanted to leave. He did.” He sounded more snappish than he wanted to. “He all but jumped out the window when he saw me.”

“It would have been _nice_ —”

“We shall rue the loss of his companionship,” Thor said. “For as long as that lasts. Perhaps some time will permit him to reconsider the decision.”

“Of course it's his decision to make, it just would have been nice if he'd actually said good-bye.”

“He bears a unique burden.”

“Yes, but....” Steve gave a frustrated shrug.

Tony suspected that Thor just alternated which of them he backed up when the inevitable argument broke out. He hadn't decided yet whether that would be amusing or annoying. Or maybe Thor just trusted Banner more than Cap did. Clint and Natasha exchanged a look. Probably they had money riding on the timing.

Steve obviously noticed their glance. “Won't SHIELD be following him again? You kept pretty good tabs on him before.”

“Hard to say,” Natasha said. “He may try different things than he did before. He knows us better, now.”

And a good thing, too. If Bruce could throw SHIELD off his trail, he could certainly throw off anyone else who was looking for him.

“He's got a locator,” Tony said. “Unless he throws it away, he can call us if he needs to.”

Judging by the nod that accompanied Steve's scowl, that would do.

The power outages continued over the next week. Six days after the party, it went out one night and was still out the next night, and the night after that, nothing but darkness from Boston to Baltimore.

“Crews working around the clock... extra personnel called... unusually long period of high temperatures ahead, with no relief in sight.”

“This is getting obnoxious,” Tony said, muting the TV.

“It's kind of a weird vacation.” Pepper picked up her toast with a considering expression. “Though if it means breakfast in bed, I can't complain too much. We should open up the Tower, maybe? To people who might be in danger from the heat. We're practically the only functional air conditioning on the island.”

“Good idea. You know what they haven't mentioned? What the _cause_ is.”

She gave him a puzzled look. “Heat wave, high demand, the usual...? This happens every summer.”

“It does. It doesn't happen like this. Not getting worse all the time. Like once it's off, it's staying off.”

“So?”

“I don't know. They sound confused and scared. You know what the next step is?” He hadn't spent all that time around military people for nothing.

“Oh.” Pepper's eyebrows went up. She put down the toast and reached for her phone.

They were a little too slow. The first letter to the editor that accused Stark Industries of concocting the power outage for publicity was on the _New York Times_ web site by noon.

*

Clint hung out on the lobby mezzanine and watched people flowing in. Publicity stunt or not—and a line of sign-holding conspiracy theorists lurked across the street, making their case to passers-by— after five days without power a lot of New Yorkers were happy to take advantage of a cool refuge and free wi-fi.

“Having fun?” Natasha settled next to him.

“Sure. Don't want anybody sneaking in again under cover of this stuff.” He ought to be sleeping. The Avengers had spent the past two nights on alert, ready to back up the city's emergency response teams. So far, there hadn't been any trouble the police couldn't handle, though it probably helped that Steve had gone out with them. Not many people wanted to pick a fight with Captain America.

She nodded. They watched. He felt himself tense up and swore silently. Would she just get it over with and ask? _So, still crazy or what?_

She said, “It's been two weeks. You haven't said anything about Bolivia.”

“Filed a report. You can read it if you want, it was hot there and boring.” His first assignment since the invasion. Sometimes he thought it would have been a lot simpler if he hadn't survived the battle. Wondered what the rest of the ones who had known Loki were doing. They didn't have to go to work with the people they hadn't managed to kill. “You should move in here.”

“I did.”

“When?”

“This morning.”

“Oh. Good.” He liked the Tower; it was 100% better than most of the places he'd slept in his life. Having so much space to himself went beyond luxury and verged on the obscene, and he loved it. The rest of his life, not so much.

Clint blinked. Hard on the heels of the thought, Erik Selvig walked into the lobby and made his way through the crowds to the front desk. Natasha had personally vetted all of the new security people, and Selvig had two SHIELD agents shadowing him, but Clint didn't feel good about this.

“You know anything about this?” he asked.

“No.” She stood up.

“Hawkeye, Widow,” Steve said over the comm. “Briefing room.”

They lingered just long enough to make sure that Selvig made it onto the elevator, then headed up themselves. Steve looked serious, but he usually did, and was probably trying to set the tone for the rest of them. Tony looked annoyed, also normal. Maybe being used to bad press wasn't the same as enjoying it. Thor looked worried. Clint decided that he should be worried, too.

Selvig looked up from some papers—actual paper—and said, “Thank you for coming. I know this is short notice. I'm here in person because we didn't think it advisable to trust this information to any network. Even this one. SHIELD received a message two days ago from a group that calls itself Chaos—spelled in Greek letters—claiming responsibility for the power outages. This was the seventh or eight such message, but most of the others were clearly spurious. This group appears to be the real thing, as you say. They've seized control of large areas of the power grid and are redirecting it to their own use. That use has certain familiar aspects. It looks as if someone—Chaos—is doing experiments toward forming a portal.”

“Without the Tesseract, or something of equal power, such experiments are doomed to be fruitless,” Thor said.

“They might get it open for a couple of seconds,” Tony said, frowning at some scribbled calculations. “Not long enough to stabilize it. Not even with as much power as they're diverting.”

“They might still do considerable damage,” Thor said. “Should they open a connection to a void, for instance? And they are causing great difficulty for the citizens in the meanwhile.”

The discussion of how they were diverting the power went pretty much over Clint's head. He knew the name Chaos from somewhere—some long-ago briefing?

“What are they trying to accomplish?” he asked, before the rest of them could totally derail things. “They're radical utopians. What good is a portal into outer space to them?”

“We'll be sure to ask them once we've put a stop to this,” Steve said.

An hour later they were on the jet, heading for the Labrador Sea. An hour after that, they hit the side of a hill that hadn't been there five minutes before.


	2. Deus ex Machina

Steve didn't quite black out. It was a long moment before he tried to move—the noise of snapping trees and shrieking metal and the final horrible impact were several minutes in the past. Ragged light leaked in through what had been the cockpit window. He cleared his throat and coughed painfully.

“Status?” He unbuckled and got to his feet. It felt like the Hulk had been sitting on his chest, but nothing seemed to be broken.

“Uff.” Clint blinked at a tree branch that had missed impaling him by two inches. “Alive. I think.”

“That plus ouch,” Natasha said.

He made his way to the rear compartment. “You two okay?”

“A new and hopefully not to be repeated experience of Midgard,” Thor judged.

Tony mumbled something unprintable and ran a hand across his chest.

“Hardware all right?” Steve asked.

“The _hardware_ is practically unbreakable. Which is more than can be said for the rest of me. What the fuck just happened?”

“We hit something.” He went back up to the cockpit rather than listen to the reply. A few minutes later, all five of them stared at the landscape through the cracked windows.

Tony said, “If this is secretly a team-building exercise, I am going to kill every last one of you.”

“That would mean we flunked,” Clint said. “But I'm pretty sure that we are nowhere near Kansas now.”

The leaves that still clung to the branch had a distinctly blue cast. They could see this because it was daytime, when a few minutes before they had been flying through darkness. The jet floor canted at a sharp angle; they should have crashed in the ocean if they were going to hit anything at all. Nothing made a sound except the ping of cooling metal and a falling branch in the wake of their passage.

Steve said, “Iron Man, you up for some recon?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Take Thor.”

“I don't—”

“ _Take Thor_. We don't know where we are or what might be around. No soloing.”

“Okay, Mom, we won't stay out past dinner. Come on, then.”

“What do we have left for systems?” Steve asked as the two air-worthy Avengers headed aft.

Clint shook himself and checked the instruments. “Comm's okay. Radar. Couple of weapons we could maybe use if we have to. This bird's not going to fly again, though.”

“That was a good landing.”

Clint snorted.

“We all lived through it. Could have been a lot worse. I've _been_ through worse.”

“Was this a trap?” Natasha asked. “Or just bad timing?”

“When it comes to enemy action, I tend to assume the worst. Best be on our guard.” From the back of the jet came the sound of a hatch opening, the familiar whine of Iron Man's repulsors and the _whum_ of Mjolnir spinning up as he and Thor set off. Steve tapped the communications board. “What've we got out there?”

Tony said, “Nothing out here's gonna kill us right away. Breathable atmosphere, little higher nitrogen than we're used to. Temperature a balmy 29 degrees Centigrade, humidity 97 percent. No significant background radiation. Looks like rain. Local environmentalists will be filing a complaint about our destruction of old growth forest. There's birds or maybe bats around. Quite a ways off. No buildings, no roads, no cell phone towers, no satellite signals, and not a Starbucks to be seen. Going to be dark soon. Thor, this look familiar at all?”

“I cannot say that it does. Perhaps a view of the stars would identify our location.”

“Worth a look. Heading up, Captain.”

Clint shook his head. “Un-fucking-real. We're on another _planet?_ ”

“Looks that way,” Steve said. The old Steve, the weedy teenager who had devoured dime novels he found on the street, sat up and thrilled with delight. The current Steve, who had witnessed more bizarre things in the past three months than he could count and had actually held things that fit the name “ray gun,” considered the idea with a calm that surprised him. Being on another planet may or may not be a problem. Being on a _deserted_ planet definitely would be. “Talk to us, Tony, what've we got?”

“Heavy cloud cover,” Tony said. “Give us a minute.... There we go. Survey says 'beats the hell out me.'”

“I fear I must agree,” Thor said. “These stars are unknown to me. The vastness of the universe allows for many such worlds.”

“So we've got that going for us. Nothing happening on any frequency except the one we're using.”

Steve exhaled once and said, “Five more minutes, get the lay of the land, then come on back.” Normal people would probably have been giving in to panic right about now. Lucky for him, he didn't work with normal people. “Natasha, you want to do an inventory, see what we've got on board that we might be able to use?”

“Happy to.” She pried herself out of the copilot's seat and went to check the plane's supplies.

“Hawkeye, let's take a look at the neighborhood before it gets dark.”

They had crashed on solid ground, at least, leaving a trail of snapped branches far off into the darkening distance. The jet had skipped up the side of a tall hill, had left most of both wings and chunks of fuselage behind along the way. The remnant lay canted at a thirty degree angle, nose up, but looked unlikely to slide. The rocky ground near the height supported thinner growth than they had plowed though on their way up, but visibility was limited by the blue-leaved bushes. And it was, as noted, hot and humid enough for instant discomfort. Captain America's uniform had been designed for temperate climates. They climbed back into the wreck to find flashlights and scouted the top of the hill, keeping close to one another.

“Some tracks over here,” Clint said. “Whatever left them isn't very big.”

“As small favors go, I'll take it.”

They checked around a bit more and found no obvious dangers. Steve switched off the light and looked up to see nothing but the emerging stars. He had been born under city lights, had grown used to the far brighter nights of the twenty-first century metropolis. Darkness meant the war, meant missions run far from civilization, meant ice closing overhead.

Once the others returned, they conferred.

“We've got supplies for a few weeks if there's water,” Natasha said. “Boring, but edible. Looks like we don't need to worry about freezing to death.”

“That's something.” Steve looked around at their solemn expressions. “It's dark, and we're not going to make much headway on figuring out what we ought to do right now. Looks like we'll be roughing it for the night at least.”

Clint snorted. “Stark thinks 'roughing it' means a hotel with only four stars.”

“But I tip well,” Tony said with his media-friendly smile.

Steve gave them both a sharp look but decided to let it go; he sometimes thought Tony would prefer it if the entire planet just forgot about what had happened to him. He said, “We'll keep a watch.”

Thor woke Steve after the end of his turn and reported nothing amiss. Steve found a good spot from which to watch and settled into silence. Time passed, measured in the dripping water from a rain shower that passed by without cooling anything. Occasionally something buzzed through the air or rustled in the undergrowth, although the source was always small. He reminded himself that even small things could be dangerous, but whatever they were, the critters gave the wreck a wide berth, perhaps unnerved by the alien reek of metal and exhaust.

Once in a while Steve's glance drifted from the hatch to his team, an old habit from many nights spent just like this one, watching and wondering what the dawn would bring. It was a self-indulgent habit, if he wanted to be honest, reassuring himself of their safety, and an intrusion to boot. He hoped it was a small one, a chance for his artist's eyes to see the things they never showed during the day. He remembered the way Jim would smile in his sleep, the way a tension eased out of Bucky's eyes and left him looking no less dangerous but beautiful as well. Maybe they used to watch him; he would never get to ask them.

Clint and Natasha slept back to back, hands on their weapons, only marginally more relaxed than they looked when awake. Her hair lay like a shadow across her face. Steve thought he saw Clint's eyelids flicker and wondered if he was sleeping at all, but his breath came slow and light. Dreaming, maybe. Thor had dropped off to sleep instantly, slept on his back and looked like a mountain even in slumber, Mjölnir at his side, his cloak wrapped around him in a regal fashion despite the heat. Tony moved a lot, and maybe that was the reason for the ludicrously large beds that seemed to come standard in the Tower? Maybe he thought everybody needed a half acre to wander around while unconscious. He lay still at the moment and looked older for it, his head pillowed on his arm, faintly outlined by his own ever-present glow. One of their own was missing, and Steve wondered where Bruce would have fit into this, what he would say, what that guarded face looked like in slumber.

One thing that didn't change, whatever else did: _I will get you all home. Somehow._

Morning brought no clearer idea of what to do, but at least they were all rested. Three of them were also very, very, very sore, which didn't stop Nat and Clint from going through their usual morning sparring session.

Tony watched them for a few minutes, then looked at Steve. “Reality check time. Marooned on an alien planet with two sadomasochists and no coffee?”

“Sounds about right.”

“Worst _Swiss Family Robinson_ remake _ever_. Let's figure out how to get out of here. Or you can all fight over who gets to shoot me.”

*

When they came for Bruce, it was in a way he didn't expect at all, on top of the way he did expect. He had ridden trains and buses, paying cash for every ticket, and finally hitch-hiked until he reached North Dakota. He didn't think he would be able to get a plane out of the country without being spotted, but this was the best kind of country for getting lost in. Maybe he could get over the border and find a way out through Canada. Or else head south; the mountains held no fears for him. He had no particular goal in mind, nowhere that he wanted to be other than open space. While the wheels spun on underneath him, he tried to think.

He wanted to believe in a way forward. Wanted the team, wanted to be part of something the way he hadn't been in years. It wasn't just the material comforts; he ached for the Tower's insulated peace in the heart of the brilliant city, for waking up in the same place every day, for Natasha's slow smile and Thor's grin and that quizzical look of Tony's when he went after a problem.

Was he running because he was used to running, because it was familiar, comfortable in all of its discomforts? He wanted to think that he was making a problem where one didn't exist, but he wanted it so much that he didn't trust himself to judge.

They didn't believe him, about the anger. He could always be angry at himself, if everything else failed. His self-inflicted curse, the divine joke of grandiose dreams turned to brutishness and blood. What if they had all gotten it _right_? If the process made you more of what you really were, what if it had worked just fine, what did that say about him? It would be easy to hate Rogers. Easy to hate all them all just as much as he wanted them, _becaus_ e he wanted them. He had said as much to Tony one night, when they were maybe both a little drunk.

_Banner, sometimes you are downright precious. We're all monsters._

_It's not the same._

_Yeah, most of us don't have the excuse that we were trying to do good._

_Steve—_

_Has enough of a martyr complex, don't encourage him. Get any more redemption stories in this place and a musical's gonna break out._

Bruce could acknowledge that Tony had a point. Insofar as the six of them had anything in common, it was their survival of painful transformations, a pointed and very personal understanding of loss. On the other hand, pop psychology was fine for late nights and a third glass of scotch, but it didn't do any good against the constant calculus of risk in the crowded daylit streets, in the subways, in the fragile glass and steel world of the city. He thought it would be okay. He wanted it to be okay.

At least, he thought he wanted that. It got stronger every day he traveled west, the itching inside his head worse than sunburn, worse than thirst and dust and exhaustion. _Let go let go let go let go._ Here, where there was no one to see, no one to be hurt, he might break the ground, crush the sky itself in his fist.

After all this time, he knew that he would fail.

He did.

It was the best pain in the world, shifting like that, the explosive instant of freefall before his consciousness was swamped, before the world became texture and smell and taste. He insisted to himself that he would not wish this knowledge on anyone, how it felt to let the rage run free. He flung himself up and down the mountainsides, destroyed wherever the impulse took him, wandered the desolation and felt contentment there. He changed back when his unnatural energy was exhausted, and slept curled in some corner of the wilderness, small and invulnerable.

Even here, someone was watching. They came for him eventually. Bruce thought that this was what he wanted. Running was so much harder than fighting, and he had never been a patient man. He stood on a hilltop and saw light glitter on metal. The sun wasn't entirely up yet, it was already brutally hot, and there were tanks moving into position. As if the Hulk couldn't handle tanks. He could see where the wave of helicopters would come over the hill, the way they would try to herd him. An old line about the definition of insanity rolled through his mind. Soon.

He followed a swift aerial motion across the horizon—that was no helicopter. Maybe they wanted to test some drones first. He waited, squinting—he had lost his glasses somewhere in the past few days, had lost everything he wanted to lose. Still had the metal disk on his wrist like a charm, unused. It didn't occur to him to use it now.

The silver thing came closer. It looked like one of the Iron Man suits in outline, but not the color, and it was bulkier than anything Bruce had seen at the Tower. The flight style was different, too, although he was hard put to say how. More direct, maybe, efficient but lacking some of Tony's assurance.

He was curious enough, confident enough to wait. There was not, after all, anything they could do to him.

“Dr. Banner?” a flat, metallic-accented voice said.

“Did General Ross send you?”

“Christ, doesn't Tony tell people _anything?_ ”

Bruce found himself surprised and oddly reassured. “Not very often. At least, not in any useful form. Yes, I'm Banner.” For some values of _am_. “I guess Ross _didn'_ t send you, then.”

“No, I'm with a different branch. Also, not an asshole. Pepper sent me to find you, because the rest of the damn team is missing.”

“The rest of...?”

“The Avengers have gone missing. The jet up and vanished over the ocean. Weird energy signatures all over the place, no one knows what the hell is going on. Your expertise is requested, and that doesn't mean playtime with those lousy Army boys waiting for you over there.”

“Oh.” Bruce looked at the ground. Looked at the hilltop where the helicopters waited. He was ready for a fight, but supposed that it would wait for him a while longer. He felt tired, in a good, physical way. Cleaned out. He might be able to handle this again, for a while. “How are we getting there?”

“Brought you some pants. I promise not to drop you.”

“It wouldn't matter if you did.”

 

*

The armor contained a slim, serious-looking African-American man who introduced himself as Colonel Rhodes, USAF, call me Jim.

Bruce, now wearing sweatpants, shook his hand with care. “How long have you known Tony?”

“Long enough to know better.” He grinned ruefully.

“That doesn't actually narrow it down much.”

“Since college. I'm not here in any official capacity, for what that's worth. Just helping out a friend.”

“Well, I know how that goes.”

A Stark Industries jet waited at the nearest airfield. The flight attendants were very pretty and apparently unconcerned to be tending to a man in Bruce's unkempt state. At cruising altitude, wondering when his life had gotten just this little bit more bizarre, he sluiced off most of the dust, shaved, and dressed. Pepper had sent some of the clothes he had left behind at the Tower, his spare glasses, and a locked-down laptop that turned out to be full of data once it had scanned his fingerprint.

“This is all very far over my head,” her recorded message said, “but it's everything JARVIS has been able to dig out about these people, the portals, and the readings when the Quinjet vanished. I hope it's helpful.”

“How's everyone holding up?” Bruce asked, scanning the files.

“This isn't her first time around this particular ride. She's been better, but she's not the fainting type. Don't know Dr. Foster very well, but I'd guess that goes for her as well.”

“If the portals are opening randomly....” He didn't want to think of it himself—not _lost_ , not all of them, not like that—knew that the universe did worse things daily. The odds were not bad, they were non-existent.

“I know. We're hoping you, Foster, and Selvig can tell us that's not the case. Or at worst, tell us for certain if they are.”

Bruce gave him an appraising look. Easy for people to say they wanted to hear the bad news.

Jim shook his head. “Not my first time, either.”

“All right.” He looked at the screen and started sorting through the information. “Where's SHIELD in all of this? Recruiting replacements?” He couldn't imagine Fury's cold practicality admitting to any other course of action.

“Whatever they're doing has not been communicated to me. I imagine their first priority is tracking down Chaos. The blackout zone's getting bigger every day.”

“Kind of embarrassing, I suppose.” He probably would have heard more about this if he'd been reading any newspapers the past few days. The stolen power had gone toward opening portals all over the place. None of them had lasted more than a minute, but they were increasing in frequency, and were more often forming in populated areas.

He read over Chaos' public statement. The usual stuff about how humanity could no longer be trusted with the energies it had harnessed, so they would be turned to a better goal. A great winnowing was needed to return the planet to a state of peace, a clearing of the ground before new growth could begin. A drastic reduction in planetary population was the first step to that end; starving the cities of power should prove an efficient means. _We regret that the transition will be painful_ , they said, _but it will be brief_.

Bruce considered how long it would take six billion people to die. How long it would take for the cities to devour themselves, for starvation to set in, for anarchy and contagion to reap their harvests. The members of Chaos would reveal themselves later on as guides to harmonious living, but were for the moment remaining hidden from the less enlightened of their fellows.

“Where's everyone else now?” Bruce asked.

“Selvig went back to Norway with Jane. They've got satellites on the job, and they're tracking the portal signatures as they form.”

Bruce read. He ate without looking at anything they fed him, ate a rather astonishing amount, after the Hulk's recent exertions. He took a nap, and woke up to find them over New York.

“We can't actually land here,” Jim said. “No power at the airport. So we'll be taking the suit over to the Tower.”

“Okay.” He looked out the window at the city and the ocean and couldn't figure out why he didn't feel nervous. Too tired, maybe, even after his nap.

It wasn't a comfortable way to travel, but he could get a hint of why Tony liked it so much; the view was uniquely incredible. A surprising number of people wandered the streets, braving the heat in search of entertainment. Hardly any traffic moved; gas was probably scarce or nonexistent. They flew over plenty of police checkpoints. A few people waved; a few gestured less politely.

They landed at the Tower, its single defiant A gilded by sunset, all of its lights shining in the shadows. That meant they had to walk right on into the penthouse, because it had probably never occurred to Tony that anyone else might land there, or might use it while he wasn't there. It was the kind of thought Bruce had been carefully avoiding the entire way back to the city.

Pepper waited for them. Jim opened up his helmet and said, “Brought you something.”

“Picking up geniuses in wastelands could get to be a bad habit for you. Bruce, it's good to see you again,” Pepper said, as if he had just been away for a weekend. She had come to meet them in her ecru suit and heels, just as if she had spent the day at the office. She held out a hand for him to shake, and he took it, not sure what he ought to be feeling.

“Thank you.” He settled on _awkward_.

Despite his two months of living in the tower, Bruce didn't know Pepper particularly well. She kept a discreet distance from Avengers business, and he had the impression that she had plenty to do of her own. She flew through the labs once on a while when she needed to drag Tony out for something, and occasionally dragged Bruce along, too, for dinner or an evening out. He liked that she didn't pry or fuss or try overly hard to make him relax. Mostly his view of her was of her public image: impeccably put-together, calm and controlled and capable. Her reaction to being kidnapped hadn't changed that impression. Once in a while when he saw her with Tony, he caught a glimpse into a world he would never know, and he generally looked away.

Bruce scratched the back of his neck, already damp with sweat. “Looks like rain.”

“That would be helpful.” She looked at the dark city as if she counted its restless, unhappy millions. “Cool things off a bit, get people off the street.”

He cleared his throat. “I'm sorry. That I wasn't here.”

“There's no reason to apologize. Come inside. You, too,” she added to Jim with a smile that looked only a bit strained. “JARVIS? Can you handle the...?”

“Naturally, Ms. Potts. I do recall the Mark II configuration, even with alterations.”

Bruce hung back long enough to watch the disassemblers start their work. He had noticed that the world had a lot of things to say about Tony Stark—especially right now, the conspiracy theorists were having their best day in years with the blackouts and his “inexplicable absence”—but they universally failed to mention _graceful_. Watching his creations in motion was an odd pleasure, maybe, but an honest one. He followed Pepper inside the cavernous living room.

“I appreciate you coming back for this. Everything is right where you left it,” Pepper said.

“I'll do my best. I don't know....” He resisted the urge to fiddle with his glasses. “I know this can't be easy, at all. I don't want to make it any harder, I just want to make sure that... that you know how—”

“Bruce.” She held up a hand. “I appreciate the effort. I've talked to Selvig, and I understand the difficulties, and the odds. You should know that I spent the better part of ten years waiting for Tony to die. To wreck a car, overdose on something, walk out into traffic without looking. I spent three months convinced that he _was_ dead. I'm not counting him out now. Not until it's a sure thing.”

He looked at her—looked _up_ at her, in those heels, standing straight and fierce—and nodded. “I'll try.”

*

Five days brought no solutions, no signs of other intelligent life, and no reprieve. The Avengers... coped. Or didn't so much, in Natasha's opinion, as she collected the cards.

“Think we have time for one more?” Steve glanced at the darkening sky.

Clint shrugged. “May as well. Sure you don't want to try—”

“Barton, there's no point to strip poker when we're all practically naked anyway,” Natasha said. The heat never let up. “Stakes can stay as they are. Which means you owe us a story.”

“All right, all right.” He thought for a second. They had gotten bored of playing for spare change and rocks, so the last hand had been played for _worst place you ever had to spend time before this_. “Nebraska. Had a trailer break down in between cities there, and it took three days to get the parts. We put on one show just to pass the time, and it was like a horror movie. Everyone in town was related to everyone else, I swear their eyes glowed in the dark, they were doing sacrifices to the corn gods or something.”

“I think I went through that town on tour,” Steve said.

“I was not aware that such sacrifices were a Midgardian tradition.” Thor had picked up the rules of poker quickly enough, and he was surprisingly good at bluffing. He tended to smile constantly.

“We need to educate you about horror movies,” Clint said. An awkward silence fell.

“And so you shall,” Thor said. “This trial is but a setback.”

“Your deal,” Natasha reminded Clint before the words _Easy for you to say_ could escape his mouth. Thor didn't need to be reminded that he was immortal, and they weren't; the knowledge was there in his mournful look, the way his attention wandered from the cards. Heimdall's gaze might find him eventually. The rest of them were not likely to be afforded that much time.

First rule of being lost: don't wander around. Their only hope, faint though it was, lay in someone back on Earth reopening the portal to the same location.

They played another hand of cards, and Thor told them stories about hunting in Asgard before he and Steve went into the wreck. That left her sitting with Clint in the hatchway. They listened to the sunset sounds, already growing familiar, insects and small things that lived in the bushes. This planet didn't have a moon.

“Stark wander off again?” Clint glanced off into the darkness.

“Guess so.” She had seen Tony do his _you are not the boss of me_ thing often enough to have predicted that he would flout Steve's order about going out alone given half a chance.

“I have my money on him wigging out first.”

“I'll take that bet.” Natasha tilted her head to look at him, eyebrow cocked. “This is not really a wigging out bunch.”

“Stir-crazy, caffeine-deprived, and doomed?”

She thought about Monaco and shook her head. Tony would kiss Death and probably feel her up while doing it, but he wouldn't invite her home. “He doesn't have it in him. So how are _you_ doing, Agent Barton?”

He shifted, just a tiny bit. “Agent now, is it?”

“Last I checked. I'm going to get right to the point, do I need to hit you in the head again?”

“Maybe.”

For a while they sat quietly.

“What I'd really like is a shower,” Natasha said.

“That'd be nice. This isn't going to be a 'we're gonna die so let's bare our souls thing' is it?”

She almost laughed. “Can you even imagine? Me?”

“Hm....” He gave her a speculative look in the last of the twilight. “No, I guess not.”

“Besides, we might not die.”

“Yeah. Funny thing? I remembered where I heard about Chaos before.”

After a moment she prodded, “And?”

“It was... while I was under.” SHIELD having, indeed, no shortage of enemies.

She nodded.

“There wasn't a lot of conversation among us, mind. The Tesseract affected everyone in different ways. Some of them got pretty chatty. They were affiliated with this Chaos bunch. Seemed pretty happy to have Loki around.”

“Sound like great people. Speaking of which. So what's going on?”

He didn't answer for a long moment. “I want to feel normal again. It's like... you know that feeling when you've been made? When it's all about to go to shit, it just hasn't started yet? It feels like that all the time.”

A thousand platitudes came and went, unsaid. The silence was not uncomfortable; that was all she asked for. They sat the way they always did, not quite touching. He took a breath, and her fingertips glanced off his wrist, hushing his next words at the sound of Steve's footsteps behind her.

“Something's happening. The board just lit up,” he said.

“A portal?” The Black Widow did not get tense; she got interested.

“No. Something above us. A lot of somethings.” He looked out at the darkness. “Anyone know where Tony went?”

Natasha stood up. “We'll find him.” Her words dragged Clint along with her, first to get the flashlights and then out. She couldn't help but wonder how long the batteries would last. Would intelligent life arise here, find some hint of their presence and be thrown into crisis? She considered the thought and let it go.

Their intrusion had already left changes, the beginnings of paths. One led down to the stream, every drop distilled before anyone drank it, even Steve. If local microbes were dangerous to humans or vice versa, there wasn't anything they could do about it. Another path led up the slope, toward the rocky area that gave something of a view. They moved carefully over the treacherous ground. At least the higher perspective and the darkness made it easy to pick out the arc reactor's light. Natasha started to head in that direction.

“Uh. Nat.”

She turned toward Clint and saw his eyes wide as he stared at the sky behind her. She turned to look, too.

“That's... definitely not a portal,” she said. “Where did they come from?”

“Hope we get to find out. Yo, Stark!” He waved the flashlight.

Tony turned to look at them, but waited where he was until they had climbed the last bit of rock. He was grinning.

Natasha looked at the thousands of lights that had appeared in the sky. “That is quite a sight.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “Not like this is the first alien armada we've seen. Curb your inner twelve-year-old and let's see who they... oh.”

Tony's smile faded. “Yeah, that figures.”

The ships in the sky had started shooting at one another. One of them peeled off and started heading toward the remains of the Quinjet.


	3. Deus ex Alienigena

At the news that they were not after all alone, Thor felt a rush of relief that surprised him. In such a short time, even a demi-god with centuries behind him could become fond of the Midgardians he had chosen as shield-brethren. He had given his farewells to Jane before they departed on this mission, just as he would do before any battle; she was warrior enough after her fashion to understand. Selfish it might be, but he far preferred death in battle—if that was what these new beings offered—to the thought of wandering this world with only memories and brute beasts for companions.

He tried again to communicate with the alien ship.

“Approaching vessel! We bear no ill intent toward any dwellers on this world. Give us assurance of the same, or we shall meet you as warriors.”

Nothing.

“Maybe they don't grok Allspeak?” In the pilot's seat, Clint shrugged.

“Impossible.” He considered recent experience. “Or at least, unlikely. The speech of the Chitauri is intelligible to those of Asgard, although they are not of the Nine Realms.”

“Then either they're careful, or they're not friendly. We can deal.”

“So we shall.” He set the console back to sweeping for portal signs and assured himself of his armor's placement with a roll of his shoulders. They went outside to join the others. “Captain, they answer no hails.”

“That's too bad.” Steve said. “Stay with me. Maybe they'll do better in person.” At the prospect of action, he looked more relaxed than he had in days. “The rest of you, stay out of sight and be ready to move until we have a better idea what we're dealing with. Hawkeye, Widow, in the trees. Iron Man, stay with the wreck. They might not notice you apart from whatever they can read from the jet itself.”

The alien vessel swooped down and hovered a short distance from the crash site. A student now of war as practiced in other realms than Asgard, Thor judged it a scouting ship. Small and nimble—relatively speaking, as it was three times the size of their own jet, and thus perhaps able to voyage between the worlds. It did not resemble the Chitauri craft, but it struck Thor as unnecessarily ugly, a rough rectangle covered over with garish designs and bristling with weaponry. It did not speak well of the minds that had created it, and he stood frowning and ready.

A bass grumbling rolled out from the ship.

“They advise us to remain still and release our weapons,” Thor said. He answered them, “We intend you no harm, whatever manner of creatures you may be. Nor do we yield ourselves to you. Show yourselves, and let us treat openly as men.”

More rumbling. The ship drifted lower, to within a few feet of the uneven ground. Thor readied himself as a hatch opened in the side.

He was tempted to call the creature an ogre; grey-skinned, it stood eight feet tall and broad in proportion, on thickly muscled legs. Of its two pairs of arms, one looked more powerful, the other less so. The heavier pair brandished weapons like those of Midgard. It wore armor of a like kind to the ship, gaudily colored in red and orange.

“Surrender yourselves and your vessel, spies,” it said.

Thor's vision clouded. “We are strangers here, present only due to misfortune, and bear you no ill will.”

“A likely tale for Vatanian infiltrators. Where did they find you? Tiny weak things, you look to be. I expect no better from such a race of cowards. What is your name, spy?”

His voice dropped to a growl. “I am Thor Odinson of Asgard, where we declare ourselves openly, and I shall teach you to mind your tongue.”

*

"Well, it's progress.” Bruce frowned at the monitor. “I just wish I knew in what direction.”

“Starting from a position of absolute ignorance, any—”

“Yes, yes. Thank you, JARVIS. I was talking to myself.”

“I do apologize, Dr. Banner.”

“No need for that.” He turned away from the screen and walked to the window, flexed his shoulders in hopes of relieving the ache in his back. Motion on the street drew his attention downward. The new ache in his head had nothing to do with the early morning glare. “When did this get underway?”

“Approximately four a.m. I would have alerted you had there been any violence.”

“Uh. Thanks.” He watched the riot cops setting up their barriers around the Tower, and thought that Cap and Tony would both have an absolute _fit_ about this, and it might be kind of interesting to see that. Bruce could see the city's point of view. The Tower's arc reactor was the only thing keeping the metro area from entirely falling apart, running the hospitals and emergency services thanks to a miracle of rapid civil engineering. Panicky, desperate people in crowds were liable to do something stupid. “You want to run those numbers past me again?” He returned to the workstation.

“Certainly, Dr. Banner.”

They were new numbers, ones that JARVIS had liberated in the wee hours, part of his efforts to understand χαός activities. Bruce wondered what Tony was going to think about the degree of initiative the AI was showing with electronic B&E. Last night's foray had gotten them what _might_ be a set of coordinates and _could_ be a portal signature. Or they could be a red herring, or an elaborately encoded grocery list.

“Colonel Rhodes has returned,” JARVIS said.

“Any word on how it went?”

“He appears to be uninjured. His verbal report to SHIELD indicated that the assault was successful so far as it went. Apparently this was not, after all, the center of their operations.”

“Damn.” It would have been rude to comment on JARVIS listening in on supposedly secure communications, so he didn't. “See if Erik or Jane are around, please? I want to check this over with them. If it's right, we'll do a test this afternoon. If we can scare up the power.”

Which of course was the irony—with χαός depleting the North American grid to power their portals (and with _things_ coming out of those portals now, those could not just be ignored), they might not be able to draw enough for their own rescue effort.

JARVIS established the connection. They went over the numbers.

“I agree with your conclusions,” Erik said. His voice sounded thin across the miles, he looked exhausted, and Bruce wondered if they were ever going to meet under pleasant circumstances. 

Jane nodded. “We've wasted more than enough time. You got the the schematics I sent?”

“Yes. We have everything on hand.” Bless Tony's borderline OCD when it came to equipment. “JARVIS, what do you say?”

“To construct the necessary components, I estimate three hours, Dr. Banner. Colonel Rhodes is approaching.”

“Let's get on that, then. We'll let you know when we're ready to start.” Bruce closed the connection and turned to the door. “Hi, Jim. How'd everything go?”

“Limb of the beast. Caught a few spear carriers, that's all. I'm not cut out for this loosey-goosey civilian stuff. Might have used your alter ego, to be honest.”

“Sorry I can't be in two places at the same time.” That would have been ever so much more convenient, wouldn't it? To have a second body, not sharing a skin.

“You're fine. How's it going here?”

“Going to try to get through today, soon as the equipment's ready. Any luck, it'll work, and I'll be out of everyone's hair again.” He stopped, surprised by his own words.

“Leaving again, then?”

Bruce busied himself with the schematics and wondered. “It's for the best. Assuming that this even works, I'm glad to have been useful, but there's no telling how long that's going to last.” He tried to force lightness into his voice. “Package deal, sorry to say, one doctor of physics with attached monster.”

Jim leaned against the nearest table and gave him a scrutinizing look. “You're waiting on the machinery now, right? Maybe you ought to see something. Got a strong stomach, seen all kinds of shit going down?”

“That's a good way to put it, but—”

“It's something to keep in mind.” He went into a huddle with JARVIS, and a series of pictures emerged on Bruce's screen.

They weren't bad, as these things went. Too charred to be more than vaguely human, for the most part, though some had other causes of death listed. There were a lot of them.

“What's all this? I mean, other than the obvious.”

“What's left of the last bunch of people who backed Tony Stark into a corner. And then gave him a flamethrower. Talk about Darwin in action.” He shook his head. “And then there was Obadiah. Long story, suffice to say that he was a threat. Pepper pulled the trigger when she had to and didn't shed him any tears. What I'm saying here, Dr. Banner, is that I can't speak for most of the team, haven't known them long enough, but these two at least, these are not fragile people. They tell you they can handle it? They mean it. They know actual monsters.”

He considered the thought and set it aside for later. “How about you?”

Rhodes made an equivocal gesture. “Different perspective. I did my hitches, before they put me on Tony-sitting duty. I knew what I was getting into, with this gig, as much as anybody can.”

He looked through the pictures again. Thought about his own body count, built high in the twilight state that was the Hulk, about the difference between that and the harsh desert light. “You might have a point.”

“Of course I do. Come on and have something to eat. Pepper's gonna want to know.”

*

Bruce hesitated in the elevator door. The penthouse living room was carpeted in printouts, all of those transparent monitors lit up.

“Good morning,” Pepper said over her shoulder, then went back to glaring at a graph. He had never seen her wearing jeans and a t-shirt before this, was astonished to find that she _owned_ sneakers.

“Morning. Is it safe to come in, or did you develop laser vision last night?” He could, he realized, picture her pulling a trigger.

She looked at him again and blinked twice, then gave him a tired smile. “It's safe. Just got off the phone with the mayor's office, is all, after an all-nighter with the engineers.”

“How's the reactor holding up?”

“So far so good.” She shook her head dubiously.

 _It's just a prototype_ , Tony had said, as if he expected someone to get on his case about it not being perfect right out of the gate. It was supposed run the tower for at least year. How long it would last under these circumstances, now, was a question. “Saw them setting up outside. Expecting a failure?”

“Expecting, no. Prepared for, yes. And for what's going to come after it.” She swung around to pin him with her gaze. “The police commissioner wanted to use you as a riot-buster, in the event. I told him where he could shove that suggestion.”

Bruce kept his voice mild. “I'm sure as a tactic it would be very... effective.” He felt a frisson of the old nervousness, the old fear of being trapped. “Wouldn't give much for the mayor's reelection chances later, though.”

“The mayor agrees with you.” The doors opened again. “Jim, hi. Let me clear some of this away.” Paper had taken over every flat surface, including the dining room table. She moved stacks of things until there was room for the three of them to sit down.

They made breakfast out of what was at hand, and ate. Pepper asked Jim about the χαός raid. Bruce watched her being very calm until he thought he might scream on her behalf.

“I feel like we should have a secret handshake,” he remarked instead. “Like we're a club.”

Jim gave him a raised eyebrow. “What, the Keep Tony from Getting His Dumb-Ass Self Killed Society?”

“Something like that.”

“I like it.” Pepper's smile had only a hint of strain. “Rhodey can be president, by virtue of seniority. I'll be treasurer?”

“That's fair. I guess I'll take the meeting minutes.” Bruce checked the time. “Just about an hour to go. See you in the lab.” He excused himself and took refuge in his own room, the one he had so abruptly left behind only a few weeks before. It felt familiar, but not like home. He wasn't sure what that would feel like.

It occurred to him that he was tired of thinking about himself. Maybe he shouldn't do it so much. Maybe he should just... see what happened, see where time took him, stop trying to steer everything. Could he do that? His eyelids drooped. He knew JARVIS would wake him if he fell asleep. He had been putting in long days, and for what? For duty, or friendship?

He thought a bit guiltily about the rest of them. Natasha and Clint had each other, and they had SHIELD—maybe, things had gotten a bit fuzzy since the Chitauri. Thor had friends and family and someday-subjects back on Asgard. Steve... didn't have anyone looking for him, did he? No one looking _out_ for him, not the way Pepper and Rhodes were looking out for Tony.

Bruce hadn't liked Rogers much on first meeting, and while his impression of the man had softened since then, it hadn't really changed. All military bearing and by-the-book propriety, Steve seemed better able to deal with the Hulk than with Bruce. But everyone deserved to have someone looking for them, didn't they? For themselves, not just because they were part of a team. He could do this much for Steve.

 _And who will look for you?_ He flexed his wrist, felt the tug of the disk Tony had given him—had made and kept ready for the day he would leave—and drifted into light sleep.

A series of chimes sounded, brought him back to wakefulness.

“Dr. Banner,” JARVIS said.

Bruce yawned and scrubbed his hands over his face. “How's the hunt going?”

“I have determined what I believe to be their main base.”

He found his glasses and frowned at the ceiling. “How sure?”

“Fifty-five percent likelihood.”

“That's not very sure. Keep working on it.”

“I shall do so. In ten minutes we will be ready to proceed with the test.”

*

It didn't take genius to see that things outside the wrecked jet were not going to go well. Tony tried to bottle his own impatience, only semi-successfully. At least in the suit he wasn't sweltering.

“They think we're spies for the other side,” Steve murmured into the comm. More of the rumbling alien speech followed. Thor's reply was a growl, which meant that in about thirty seconds, he was going to hit someone.

Tony didn't blame him. It had not been the worst week of his life—nothing was ever going to beat the palladium... thing—but it was pretty well up there. He had cleared his account of regrets, after that, as much as he might ever be able to. Tried not to put things off that needed doing. That didn't help much when it came to coping.

In Afghanistan he had at least been _busy_ , and too pissed off to think about much besides blowing the Ten Rings to kingdom come and possibly even surviving it. This, now, this business of going cold turkey on coffee, Pepper, alcohol, and memory foam, all at the same time, while having absolutely nothing to do—that was hell, and the thought of _dying_ like this, slow and futile and helpless? Bring on the damned alien army.

Steve said, “Apparently we've landed in the neutral territory—I think they mean the planet?—they use to settle their differences, and since we don't look like these guys, we must be some new alien species that's allied with their enemies.”

“That's really pretty stupid, Cap,” Barton said.

“Yeah. Thor—” He paused. “Thor has just challenged this fellow to single combat, since he, or she, or it, has insulted our honor. Hang on.” More growls and rumbles. “They seem to like the idea. Stand ready, we'll see what happens. We might yet walk out of this as friends.”

“Ever the optimist,” Tony said. “If we don't?”

“We take their ship.”

“Cap, I knew I liked you.”

“See if you can get any kind of handle on their systems in the meantime, so we know where to hit.”

“Will do.”

“Party starts now. And the ugly guy opens up with a solid left to the middle!” Hawkeye said. “Thor is pleased, looks like we might have a good match, ladies and gents.”

 _I work with these people._ Tony pulled his right gauntlet off and turned what was left of the jet's sensor array toward their new acquaintances, picking out hot spots and weapon ports, guessing at the ship's internal layout, tuning out Clint's play-by-play. “JARVIS, they transmitting anything?”

“Indeed, sir.”

“Jam it. Any more of them on the way?”

Outside, Thor snarled. The distinctive sound of Mjolnir hitting something heavy followed.

“And he's down!” Clint said. “One, two....”

JARVIS said, “Not at present, sir. The forces present appear to be fully engaged in slaughtering one another.”

“Dinner and a show.” He studied the readouts and switched channels. “Cap, they're warming up the main gun on that scout ship.”

“Roger. Widow, diversion pattern 2. Hawkeye, take out that gun. Thor and I go straight in, Iron Man on cleanup.”

“Oh sure, hog all the fun.”

Steve's smile was audible. “You can go first next time. On my three.”

On his _two_ , every light on the communications board came on at once.

“Come in, Avengers. Come in. Is anyone receiving?”

“ _Bruce?”_ The portal signature read faint, so pathetically small—but evidently enough to carry a transmission through. “Bruce?”

“Three,” Steve said on the other line, and Tony moved.

“JARVIS, relay from the jet.” An explosion signaled Hawkeye's hit on the alien ship's main gun. Other weapons fired at the far slope, following Natasha's diversion.

Bruce said, “Tony, is that you?”

“No, it's my mirror universe double, I... don't have a goatee, what did you _do?_ ” _Guess relativity can GTFO._

“...Selvig's computations, but I don't know how long we can keep it up, we'll try again at this location—”

“Yeah, I don't think that's gonna work. We've got a situation here, hang on.” He fired both repulsors at the gun tracking Natasha. Thor and Cap had vanished inside the other ship. “You still there?”

“Running out of juice, we're dragging half the country down with this.”

“Dammit.” The interior of the ship was as painfully garish as the outside. A couple of aliens lay on the floor. One had had its arms rearranged and didn't move. The other one came up with a roar, and Tony's attention was fully occupied for a couple of seconds. The suit was usually overkill in a hand to hand fight, but these things were fast and strong. It helped when he realized that they didn't keep their brains in their heads, but somewhere in the central body.

“You sound busy,” Bruce said, his familiar dry tone drawing a laugh out of Tony.

“Just a little.” He followed the sound of mayhem in progress toward the front of the ship. “We need to—” _I'm an idiot._ “Bruce? Dump the data. Dump everything you have over to us, we'll work on it from this end, we—” He thought about the much larger ships overhead. “We can get a power source _here_.”

“Right, right, sending now. Pepper and Jim say hi.”

Thor shouted—your mother lay with a bilgestipe?—the muted ring of Cap's shield striking something filled the ship with its crystal sound, a bulkhead to Tony's left exploded, and he never could think of anything to say at moments like this.

_Receiving, receiving, receiving._

“Contact has been lost,” JARVIS said.

He put his fist through the wall and stepped onto the bridge of the alien ship.

The room was cramped and crowded. Two of the crew were occupied in all-out battle against Avengers; a third ran straight into Tony as it tried to flee. He put the creature on the floor with a move that impressed even him—fine, okay, the element of surprise hadn't hurt—and aimed a missile at its midsection.

It folded all four hands across its chest and said something in its own language that could have been “don't shoot” or “do your worst.”

Thor laid a hammer-enhanced haymaker on his own technicolor ogre. When he turned to help Cap, it jumped back up and landed on his back. Four hands made it pretty much impossible to throw.

“Aim for the middle,” Tony said. Steve punched his foe across the head and got it edge-on with the shield in the midsection, then did the same with Thor's.

“See what you can get out of these guys,” Steve said to the Asgardian. “We'll clear the rest of the ship,” Steve said.

“You missed Bruce's call,” Tony said.

“ _What?”_

“He's got impeccable timing. At least they know where we are.”

“We're going to have more company soon.”

“There is that little wrinkle.”

*

The six aliens they had seen proved to be the ship's full complement. Two of them appeared to be dead.

“That was fun. Now what?” Clint asked.

“See what we can do with our conscious captive,” Steve said. “Strip and secure the rest of them.”

“That will be... less fun.”

“At least we're well-paid.” A goal, an objective, a way forward—that made all the difference. They might be lost, but they weren't helpless. If contact had been achieved once, it could be again; they just had to make sure they took advantage of it.

He stared down at the prone and conscious alien and wondered how to read the body language of something so inhuman. Thor loomed, and Natasha stood nearby, ready to help if their prisoner turned unruly. The other two kept watch outside; he hoped they weren't going to kill each other.

Stripped of its uniform, bound hand and foot, it looked at him with nothing he could identify as fear. Without the helmet, its head looked too small—but then, it was only a sensory appendage, not a braincase. Long eyes with slit pupils were set slightly to the sides of its head. It had a strong jaw, thrust slightly forward, and broad nostrils. It skin was rough and thick, felt hot compared to human body temperature, and appeared thinner in spots on its skull and hands. It had no external ears. It watched him without blinking, but its four hands moved slowly, perhaps testing its bonds.

“Thor? Ask its name, first of all.” He watched its reactions closely. When the Asgardian spoke, the captive's nostrils flared, and a membrane flickered across its eyes. Surprise, perhaps, at being able to understand?

It replied in a bass grumble and flashed its teeth, the first few of which were pointed.

Thor said, “I am not sure you will be able to pronounce that. I think you would consider it male. His people are called the Erraramm.”

“Fine. We'll call him Buddy. Find out whether the rest of its crew are likely to survive if we leave them here. I don't want any more deaths if we can prevent them. We're not here to interfere in their war, we just happen to need their ship to try to get home. Got all that?” Visions of bunkers and command centers and trenches and defiant, frightened men... he shook it off. Whatever war they had stumbled into was not their own.

“The others of the crew should take no harm from the weather or wildlife of this world,” Thor said. “So long as they are not found by their enemies, of course.”

“We'll see what we can do about that.” He had only the haziest outline of a plan, but things could be worse. “We don't have a lot of time to work with. His people up there are going to want to know what's going on with this ship. We need to first, make sure this thing can get off the ground. Maybe have Buddy here contact his superiors, feed them a story to keep them off our backs long enough for us to work out what we're going to do. We can only do that if we can trust him, though. We can't get into a shooting match with an entire army.” He could see Thor about to argue with him on that, so he went on more sharply, “If we're mobile, if we can figure out how to fly this thing, then we have some options. Get to it. Anything he can tell you about his people, what's going on here, that's useful, too.” He clapped Thor on the shoulder, glanced at Natasha and caught her nod. She would keep the interrogation on track. Steve gave Buddy a nod as well and headed back out.

“Quite the light show, but no more visitors yet,” Clint said. “What's the play?” He stood in a braced and easy stance, never moved his gaze from the sky.

“Tony, get down here,” Cap said into the comm.

“I love it when you use your authoritative voice.” A point of light banked down in their direction.

“You're just happy to have temperature controls in there.”

“Could be. What've we got?”

“Thor and Natasha are talking to him. No matter what happens at home, we can't stay here, there's going to be more of these guys on the way. We'll have to strip the jet and blow it.” He looked at Clint. Clint looked at the ground with a visible wince. “I'm sorry.”

“S'okay. It's not going anywhere anyway.” He squared his shoulders. “Guess we'd better make it a rush job.”

“Faster the better. Tony, you get a chance to look at the stuff Bruce sent over?” He couldn't believe they had been so close.

“Yep. It's... not nothing.” He landed nearby with a thud.

“Is it enough to use?”

“Don't know. Depends on what we can find here.”

Steve did not like the sound of Tony uncertain about something. “Figure it out and let me know.” He strode over to the jet. “We can't leave anything behind that might be used or traced back to Earth, not without knowing a lot more about these people and their intentions.”

He could not have given his team a more perfect task on which to take out their collective stress; it astonished him how quickly they reduced the jet to components that might be useful later. Steve brought one of the last armloads of supplies out of the Quinjet's shell and heard Clint whistle.

“Heads up, guys, we've got incoming.”


	4. Deus Irae

Buddy stared at Thor for a long time before asking his first question. “What are you creatures?”

Thor drew himself up. “On Midgard, we are known as the Avengers.”

Buddy's eyes opened wide, whited out by nictitating membranes. His arms tightened over his midsection and all four hands spread.

“I see you have that concept here,” Thor said.

“Are you going to eat me?”

Surprised, Thor shook his head. “No...?”

Buddy's eyes returned to normal. “I though you were herbivores. Flat teeth.”

“We consume both meats and plants. And your folk?”

“Likewise.” Buddy showed off his teeth. “More meat, perhaps.” Curiosity seemed to be getting the better of him, or perhaps the fact that they hadn't shot him. “Avenging spirits can be appeased only by blood, and they do not discriminate. You do not seem to be spirits. Yet—I understand your speech.”

“We are flesh and blood.”

“And you are all of the same kind?” He looked at Natasha. “You appear very different.”

“I am of Asgard; that is why you can understand me. It is a gift of my people. These others are of Midgard. Our folk are kin, but not kind. And yours? Your enemies?”

Buddy hesitated.

“We have no involvement in your war,” Thor said again. “Thousands of innocent folk on Midgard are placed at risk every moment of our absence. To them, we shall be answerable if we permit anything to stand in our way. I particularly, as its appointed guardian, must do all within my power to go to their aid. I know something of vengeful spirits.”

“Our enemies are the Vatanians. We share this star system. My people are the Erraramm. We are... perhaps as you say, kin, far back in our histories.”

“And the reason for your war?”

Buddy's eyeshields flickered. “For this war? There have always been wars. They do not tell lowly communications operators such things.”

“I see that commanders of armies adhere to certain truths no matter their shape, or their realm.” He considered what next to ask, with time of the essence.

“Hawkeye reports incoming,” Steve said. “Looks like another scout ship. Could use some intervention here. How are you and Buddy getting along?”

“One moment.” He looked at the alien. “One of your compatriots hastens to investigate. Perhaps they wish to know why your communications have ceased. Can you convince them that their assistance is not needed? Or must they meet their warriors' end here, rather than with your enemies?”

Buddy tensed against his bonds. “You are arrogant, Asgardian! My people are not so easily overcome as that.”

Thor grinned. “Your circumstances say otherwise. I could have destroyed this vessel myself, rather than giving combat to your champion. It is with reluctance that we shall shed your peoples' blood, but our need is great.” Would not the mortals be dying, without the devices on which so many relied for food and for healing? “I give you my word, you shall come to no harm from any of us if you aid us.”

They stared at one another for a moment. Buddy seemed to deflate. Thor wondered how old he was for his species.

“I will... try, but I cannot—”

“Do what you may,” Thor said, and looked at Natasha. She shrugged. Thor released Buddy's bonds. The alien got to his feet slowly, all four hands in motion. “Captain, we shall attempt it.”

“Great. Tony's itching to blow something up, so either way we come out of this ahead.”

Thor laughed. “Your spirit encourages me, Captain. We shall yet prevail.”

Buddy got to his feet and moved toward a console, Thor only a step behind him.

Buddy slipped into the seat and settled his hands over the controls. Alien speech filled the bridge, demanding their condition.

“Claw 713 out of the _Garrvivirr's Scythe_ reporing,” Buddy said. “Glory to the Admiral. Uh... hostiles, um, all hostiles killed in action?”

“You tell me, 713, were they killed or weren't they? What is your status? You're going on report anyway for being out of communications so long.”

Buddy bared his teeth. “Hostiles killed. Our ship sustained damage. Repairs are underway.”

“Where is your captain?”

“Overseeing the, um, the stripping of the enemy ship. Would you like me to give him a message?”

“Stripping _what_ from the enemy ship?” Avarice and suspicion warred in its voice.

 _They are not unlike people we know, then—to seek their own advantage even as they battle a greater foe._ Thor frowned.

Buddy hesitated. “Uh. There may be biological weapons on the enemy ship. We'll send a full report on to the _Scythe_ as soon as we're done here.”

“See that your hurry up about it, or the Admiral hears even more than she already shall about you. Including _your_ name.”

“Aye, sir! Egg-licker,” he added under his breath. “They're turning around.”

“That was well done,” Thor said. “Captain? It would appear that we have bought some time.”

“Great,” Steve said. “We're just about done out here. Next step, figure out where to next and how we're going to get there.”

“Indeed. One moment, Captain.” He turned back to Buddy. “Do you know how to operate this vessel?”

The alien looked at him blankly. “I only got out of training two weeks ago.”

*

Steve got the final bit of gear onto what Clint had dubbed the _Jolly Mon_ , a reference that had stumped Tony, never mind Steve. They left the three captive aliens secured to one another, backs to a tree some distance from the remnants of the jet.

“That's the last of it,” he said. “Thor, Iron Man, when you're ready.”

Tony said, “Hit me up, Goldilocks.”

Thor raised Mjolnir. The alien sky responded to its power. What they had done once by accident was repeated to purpose, boosting the suit's power reserve far past its usual limits. The two of them fired at once, then, rendering everything the Avengers had left behind quite useless.

Steve said, “Hawkeye, I need you to work with Buddy and Thor, figure out how to fly this damn thing. Hell, maybe there's a manual somewhere on board.” Clint looked surprised and dubious. Steve frowned at him. “Get on it. We might not have much time. Tony, take a look at the hardware, see what you can figure out.”

Above, the battle went on, lights moving across the sky. Sometimes a light would grow, flicker, and die. Sometimes one would move down, cross the horizon's edge and disappear. This world must be littered with crashed ships, if this was how they settled their wars, if war was the constant Buddy had described.

Tony headed into the aft section of the _Jolly Mon_. Steve went with the others to where Natasha guarded their new friend. He found Buddy sitting quietly, hands in full view, watching Natasha while she watched him. She held one of the alien guns cradled in both hands.

“All quiet,” she said.

“Good. Thor, ask him what they do with their dead.”

The Asgardian repeated the question for Buddy and translated his response. “They are to be garbed according to their family and status, and given their weapons, and laid in a high place where the beasts of the air might return them to the earth.”

“I don't think we'll be able to do that. Not the garbing at least, and we can't leave weapons here that we might need.”

A discussion followed. Thor looked unhappy. “I am told that we will be pursued by their vengeful spirits, for the insult done that shall deny them their rightful place in their halls of the dead.”

“I think we can live with that. I'll handle them. You guys, figure out if we'll be able to fly this thing.” He went out to move the bodies to the rocky height, where the local wildlife might dispose of them appropriately. It wasn't the strangest idea of an afterlife he had come across. He washed his hands in the stream before returning to the ship, and found Tony in what he hoped was the engine room. “How does it look?”

“Alien.” Tony had stripped off the armor for ease of movement, and stood glaring at the console as if it had keyed his Bugatti. “I think this ship is old. Looks like they've bolted on new stuff here.” The instrumentation mixed analog and digital interfaces, and Steve had to agree that they didn't look smoothly integrated. He wouldn't have known where to start on the task himself, but he watched Tony feel around until he found the catch that opened the control surface up. That just multiplied the bewildering quotient.

Steve said, “If you can't figure it out, we'll just... think of something else.” He tried to sound encouraging.

“Sure you will.” Tony's look said that he knew exactly what Steve was doing with that comment. He started tracing wires. “And by the way, Pattern 2, really? You guys have been practicing so much you've named your maneuvers?”

Steve shrugged and answered the unasked question. “I figured you were busy. Chitauri, SHIELD stuff, random villains, that stuff I assume you actually get paid for....”

“Unlike some of us, I can multitask.”

“Saturday, 8 a.m.” He headed back toward the bridge and passed Natasha in the hallway. She fell into step beside him.

“You know, it took me a month to learn how to do that.” She had obviously overheard the interchange with Stark; she raised her eyebrows with a curious look.

Steve ducked his head to hide his grin. “One of these days he's going to realize how predictable he is, and we're in for a world of trouble. How are we for weapons?”

“The ship doesn't have much unless we can fix that main gun. A few dozen missiles, smaller beam weapons, but I think we'd be better off avoiding a fight if we can. We've got nine of their hand weapons in working order; some of them suffered damage, and I can't be sure they'll work correctly. A little awkward for us just from the size, the trigger's on the top. I fired one outside. They're not very precise, but could certainly fry most of us. Might take a few shots to get through that armor the Erraramm wear.”

“Show me.” They stopped in the hall behind the bridge so Natasha could demonstrate how to grip the weapon and where the trigger was. Steve's strength made a lot of difference, but it was still uncomfortable without the extra hand. “Thanks.”

They continued on to find two blond heads and a scaly one bent together in close conference over one of the instrument panels. Clint looked up, much more cheerful than he had been earlier.

“Hey, Cap.” He spun his chair to face the middle of the cramped room.

“What've you got for us?” Steve leaned against the doorway, careful not to touch anything that might move.

“Gonna be fun.” He flipped a couple of switches. “You hear me back there, Stark?”

“Keep interrupting me and I'll die of old age before we get this thing off the ground.”

“I'll take that as a yes.” Clint clapped his hands together. “All right, everybody. So the thing about this ship? It's built to be run by people who have _four hands_. So this is gonna take some practice and coordination. Buddy's got communications. Anyone tries to hail us, think fast and put them off. Natasha and I are navigation. Thor, Cap, you want to handle the guns. Tony, I figure you'll be trying to keep anything from breaking as we go. Looks like we get that team-building exercise after all.” Clint grinned.

“Murdering you now.”

“Wait until we get where we're going. Where _are_ we going?” He looked at Steve.

“For now? Away from here, before more ships come around to investigate.”

*

Bruce willed the power readouts to improve. They didn't. They couldn't even get a tiny portal with what they had available.

“JARVIS. Any idea when we'll get another shot?”

“I have not yet completed my... investigation of the power sources available. It may be as long as twenty-four hours.”

 _Investigation,_ Bruce thought, _meaning can I take them over and redirect their output the same way Chaos is. And when they get back, Tony and I are going to have a long, long talk._

“Okay, well. Keep me up to date. How's the location effort coming along?”

“Probability has reached 67 percent that the location under consideration is their headquarters,” JARVIS said.

“Sounds better every time. What does SHIELD think about it?”

“I have not shared this data with SHIELD.”

“What? Why not? I thought you were—”

JARVIS' tone never varied from patient politeness. “I would prefer that my recent activities did not come to their attention. Certain legal niceties may have been disregarded.”

“I see.” He noted the passive voice with amusement. “Well, there are extenuating circumstances....”

“Indeed there have been. I was raised under bad influences, Your Honor.”

Bruce chuckled. “Can you take a look at what they _are_ doing? Where they're concentrating?”

“I believe they are chasing down another false trail with the current mission in the south Atlantic.”

“Believe, how strongly?”

“Allow me to amend. I am certain.”

“Great. That's great.” He located a coffee cup and tasted its contents cautiously. “Can you put them on the right trail? Without them noticing? Or just send it over and put my name on it if you want to.” He smiled. “It's not like I have a history of being enormously law-abiding.”

“I should not like to prejudice any future court cases involving members of Chaos.”

“I'm sure we can trust SHIELD to come up with a good reason for serving up a search warrant if we have to. It seems like they don't usually bother with those, anyway.”

“Very well, Dr. Banner. I shall put together a communication for your approval.”

“Thanks. I'd like your opinion on something.” He leaned against the table and considered the empty space in the center of the room. Talking to JARVIS always involved a certain amount of imaginative work. “These portals that they're opening. They never go the same place twice. They have always gone to a _place_. They've hit empty planets and asteroids, but never empty space, despite there being so very much more of that in the universe. Does that sound to you like they're _looking_ for something?”

“It is indeed possible.”

“What it is, is the question. You've got all that astro data that Tony's been chewing over, trying to find the Chitauri space. Is there any correspondence that comes up? Anything that they could be looking for? It's obviously not just planets, and not even Earthlike planets—they've found six of those so far, and never went back.”

After a moment, “I shall give this my full attention,” JARVIS promised. A grim note had entered his voice.

*

A while later he noticed that Pepper had quietly inserted herself into the lab. Bruce wasn't used to having anyone else around when he worked, and expected that within an hour he would be trying to think of a polite way to ask her to leave. Instead she was so quiet that when she sighed he jumped in genuine surprise at the reminder of her presence.

“Something wrong?” he asked. “Anything I don't already know about, anyway?”

“Fending off idiocy and thinking too much.”

“I can sympathize.”

“People have some weird ideas about the team. I get frustrated. SHIELD is not as helpful as it could be.”

He hummed a vague little sound that tried for both noncommittal and encouraging. Maybe it would be better to stick to his data.

“Most of them think that it's... good? That it's easy? They want to think it comes without a price tag, or that if it did, it's a fair one.” She looked off at something he could not see. “And it's not. No one deserves the kinds of things that have happened to you, to any of you. God knows, Tony is a better man than he used to be, but you can't say that anyone at all _deserves_ to be... hurt like that.”

He nodded, and considered the way Tony acted—the way _all_ of them acted—invulnerable. The way that armor slipped, sometimes, the way his eyes could be open wounds. “Not fair,” he agreed. “There's ways to turn it. Sometimes. If you're lucky, in being unlucky. I think Tony's been pretty lucky. As these things go.” He wondered again where Betty was, if she ever thought of him.

“A little luck. A lot of where we are now? That's down to choices. To will.” She looked at him for a long moment. “Did it help? Going away, I mean.”

He waited to reply until he had relaxed again. “Hard to say.” Would the pressure have gotten to be too much, if he had stayed in the city? Would he have caved to the temptation just the same? Or could he have ridden it out, if he had taken the chance?

“You know we'll be happy to have you back again, as long as you want to stay.”

“Is this an official invitation?” He tried to sound light.

“You've already had one of those, but you mean, am I acting for anyone else? No. I don't get involved in Avengers business, you know that.” She smiled, but it wasn't altogether pleasant. “There's a lot that SHIELD does, that I can't approve of.”

“I can see how your interests would not be theirs, necessarily.” He remembered her at Phil's funeral, remembered riding into the war zone in New York, hazy fragments of the battle.

Pepper shook her head. “Believe it or not, it's nothing to do with the possibility of Tony getting killed someday. He's going to be out there doing this no matter what. I wouldn't try to stop him even if I thought I could. I save my worry for other things.”

“And you think I might help with that?” He could think of a few himself. _What would you do, what wouldn't you? Would you torture your brother to save Earth? Kill millions of people to save billions?_ Such thoughts fed the anger; he tapped it, bled it off harmlessly and paced a tight circle, wondered if he was imagining a new wariness in her gaze when he moved.

“I do,” she said. “With gazing into the abyss, and watching the watchmen. And honestly? It's nice to have you around. As a friend.”

“That's... a very kind thing to say,” he said, at an absolute loss.

Pepper smiled again, genuinely this time. “Don't kid yourself. We're not kind people. But the offer stands.”

“Thank you.” He turned back to his work. Not kind? He could... believe that. But there were other virtues than kindness, ones suited to the lives they had chosen, surrounded by monsters. “I guess I'll stick around. For a while.”

*

Hours passed in trial and error and explanations translated through Buddy's layman's understanding of his own world's science and Thor's even worse grasp of the Midgardian approach. Tony had a headache.

This kind of thing was part of why he'd built JARVIS, but in theory he didn't need the help. It made things a hell of a lot easier, though, than putting together a purely mental model, tracing all of the connections and the things that made the ship tick, using tools that hadn't been designed for human hands.

Hell. A piece of _paper_ would come in handy.

A cup of coffee would be even better.

In the space between the spaces of the ship, the places where things _happened_ , he shone the flashlight ahead and squirmed through a gap that no Erraramm could have fit through—maybe they used some other species for their maintenance work—with only moderate loss of skin. He found storage tanks with illegible labels, and conduits that led back out toward the main corridor. He backtracked, swearing, and found a little locked room that those conduits ought to lead to. It didn't take long to get it open.

 _Well, well. Maybe the universe isn't out to get me after all._ He tapped the intercom panel. “Can I get a few extra hands back here? Want to try something.”

*

Buddy sat bolt upright, eyes whiting out in astonishment as sound roared through the ship's intercom. “What in the four hells?!”

“This is, according to some Migardians, considered to be music,” Thor said.

“But not by you?”

“For all the great love I bear their people, by some measures they are unfathomable. But I believe this to mean that the Man of Iron makes progress in understanding your ship's workings, such that his ethereal servant may communicate with it.”

Buddy considered the noise. “It is not without similarity to our martial anthems. Though they tend to be... slower in tempo.”

Thor moved the intercom switches as Buddy had shown him and spoke into the receiver with care. “You are meeting with success?”

“Found the 3D printer.”

“That is... good?” he guessed.

“That is _great._ We won't need to do a scavenger hunt across the fleet of the damned, here. Portal components, coming up.”

“Excellent!”

Buddy gave him a puzzled look. “Ethereal servant?”

“Allow me to explain....”

*

Clint and Natasha actually hugged each other. Steve considered hugging them both, but settled for grinning until he thought his jaw might break.

“Hey, where's my hug?” Tony hauled himself out from the ship's innards with a wounded look. “Ouch, okay, that's enough, how are both of you so pointy. So this, this is a major step in the right direction.” He looked at Steve. “We're going to need more power. This ship looks to be strictly short-range, it doesn't have the oomph we'll need to get a portal open. The good news is, there's hundreds of nice big power sources right overhead.”

“You want to take one over?” Steve frowned, weighing the effort and the lives it had cost to take this one small ship.

“Not necessarily.” Tony leaned against the wall. He was probably exhausted. “You remember our Swiss friend. He had a little energy manipulator I've been picking apart in odd moments. Nice little tool, could have built one if I'd ever been interested in, oh, _stealing_ power instead of producing it. Maybe he sold one to Chaos. All we need to do is get in close enough.”

“All right.” He nodded to Clint and Natasha. “Huddle with our native guide and pick us out a target. Make sure he knows we're not going to do any permanent damage, not interested in a fight at all.”

“Will do.” Clint gave him a little salute as they headed for the bridge.

“Good work,” Steve said. “Get the power sorted, and then it's second star to the right, and straight on 'til morning?”

Stark gave him a blank look.

“Don't people read _Peter Pan_ anymore?”

“Oh. Yeah, probably.” He levered himself off the wall and turned back toward the instrument panel. His clipped tone said _no more talking now_. “You planning to let me work, or are we discussing ancient literature?”

The weirdest things set the man off sometimes.

“Sure. Let us know when you're ready, we'll go find that power source.” Steve backed off and let him get to it.

On the bridge, they strapped themselves in as well as they could, given seats designed for life-forms with a different arrangement of limbs.

“Maestro?” Clint looked at him with a cocked eyebrow.

Steve hadn't spent all that time in show business for nothing. He grinned. “Hit it.”

*

She and Clint agreed, with minimal need for actual speech, that the _Jolly Mon_ was a bitch to fly. Graceless in the atmosphere, her port engine had something wrong with it that required adjustment every five minutes, and the air circulator on the bridge whined, just at the edge of human hearing.

They took the ship up slowly and held it a hundred feet above the treetops to see how it felt. Buddy and Thor translated damage readouts and read them off to Tony. Stark had given up swearing and adopted martyred silence; she wouldn't have thought it possible. When they did get back home, he was never going to shut up about this, but he might actually have earned some bragging rights for doing seat-of-the-pants repairs on an alien spaceship _while_ it was flying. Not more than the two of them for managing to fly the thing in the first place, but Natasha never bragged.

“How do you feel?” she asked out of the blue.

“ _What?”_ Clint shot her an astonished look, then took her meaning and put his attention back on the console. “Feel fine.” He scowled.

“Good.” She smiled her private smile.

“Might not last,” Clint said.

“Nothing does.” They flew for a long time in silence, getting the hang of the tandem action required to work the controls. At least the two of them could share a seat more easily than Thor and Captain America. The battle in the sky shrank, then disappeared beyond the horizon.

“Doesn't look like anyone's chasing us. Let's try some speed, shall we?” Clint said.

“Bring it up slowly.” Steve said. “Is there a fuel gauge somewhere?”

“This one here. Looks like we've still got half a... thing, of whatever it is. Bringing her up slowly.” They accelerated to full with only a few wobbles from the port engine. “I'll say this for her, she's fast enough to make up for most of her issues.”

“Good,” Steve said. “We'll wait as long as we can, but we'll need all of that speed when we do it. Probably only get one shot at this. Hawkeye, you want to pick us out a target?”

“Sure thing.” He went back into a huddle with Buddy and Thor, leaving Natasha to keep them steady. “We're going to need some kind of excuse—Buddy, can we claim we need to come in for repairs or something? This thing has taken some genuine damage.”

It seemed to Natasha that it was a beat too long before Buddy answered Thor once the question was translated. Of course, she was professionally paranoid.

It also occurred to her to ask, “What are we going to do with Buddy? We can't exactly take him home with us.”

“Good question.” Steve looked pensive. “This thing have a lifeboat, or anything?”

More discussion followed. “They have suits, sufficient to sustain life for some hours,” Thor reported.

“That should do, if we can trust them to pick him up.”

Half an hour of battlefield analysis later, they had a target, and had fielded another call from Buddy's superiors wanting to know what they were doing.

“We can't wait much longer,” Steve said. “We're pushing it the way things are. Tony, how much time?”

“If I've got this right, ten minutes. If not, we'll probably never know about it.”

  
  


*

Under SHIELD agent coaching, Buddy did some fast talking, enough to get them in line for access to one of the big ships that cruised some distance above the main battlefield, spitting out smaller attack vessels and taking in damaged ones for repair.

That lasted right up to the moment Tony hit the switch on his new toy and started charging up the portal generator he'd reconfigured the remnants of the ship's main gun as.

“Incoming, five o'clock,” Clint said. “This looks like the end of our free ride.”

Steve said, “Hit the automated distress signal. That should get us a few more minutes of confusion while we get Buddy suited up.”

“Let us do so.” Thor stood and gripped the alien's shoulder, though he had to reach up a bit to do it. Buddy made a complicated four-handed gesture around the bridge and gave them little bow before he and Thor headed to the airlock.

Two minutes later, Thor said, “He indicates that he is ready. Captain?”

“Send him on his way,” Steve said. “And we'll go on ours.” He kept his eyes on the control panels. That bright flashing light was the airlock opening.

And that other light would be the airlock control being overridden. He checked the camera feed.

Buddy had two hands on the control plate. “I am sorry,” he said. “But I cannot allow you to go. My superiors will value you and your machines most highly. You will be allies, not subjects, I promise it on my hope of acceptance into the halls of virtue, but I cannot allow you to leave, not now, I must prove it to them. My override code will keep this vessel in position until others can arrive. I must—what? What are you doing?”

Steve nodded at Clint and Natasha, and the second light shut off. The first one continued to flash as the override was shut out of the system.

Clint said, “Kid, you are going out that lock one way or another. You have to get up pretty damn early in the morning to get the drop on Nat and me.”

The lock finished cycling, and Buddy's protests died away as the air thinned out into space.

“There goes his emergency beacon,” Natasha said. “He's not so stupid.”

Steve shrugged. “Clever kid, actually. Just... a kid. How's our power source coming?” Thor returned to the bridge and resumed his position, sharing the board with Steve.

“Incoming is not changing course,” Hawkeye said.

“Thor, warning shot,” Steve said.

“Indeed, Captain.”

Natasha said, “We have a portal forming. Incoming ship at ten o'clock, fast. Portal... not forming?” She clicked the intercom. “Stark, what the hell?”

“ _Working_ on it!”

Natasha read off, “Ship at ten, ship at six, ship at three. Three o'clock is peeling off—picking up Buddy.”

“We'll take the ten first. Firing,” Cap said. “Thor, on two.”

“Ten is taking evasive action,” she said. “Six closing in, firing.”

The _Jolly Mon_ shuddered. Clint and Natasha steered away from the attack, toward the place where their makeshift equipment was doing its best to form a portal. The light flickered, stabilized, dispersed again.

“We've got another one at seven. They're trying to hail us.” Her screens lit up with blue alarms. Their own ship bucked and jerked, threw her against the straps. They settled again, and just as her stomach was back in place it happened again, and when she tracked down that fourth ship, it was to realize that it was right on top of them.

“That alarm you are hearing is the intruder alert,” Thor said. “Three of them, near the aft hatch.”

“Let's go,” Steve told Natasha. “Tony, incoming.”

“Yeah, I can see them.” He sounded very calm. “I'll just, uh, slow them down. A little.”

 _No armor_. She looked at Steve.

“I got this,” Clint said, angling himself to watch Natasha's half of the controls as well as his own.

She got her straps undone first and ran. Steve stayed right behind her, a more comforting presence than she would have thought a few months before. The alien weapon weighed heavy in her hands, designed for a creature with more raw power at its command.

An Erraramm loomed ahead of her. Garish armor fluoresced under the ship lights. She did not like these people; they were almost impossible to disable without killing, and damn difficult to kill, for that matter. Her size provided one advantage, a lower than expected angle of attack, and speed it was not prepared for. She aimed for its head to blind it. When it ducked aside from the blast and raised its own weapon, she ducked in close and drove her longest knife into the gap between armor sections at its waist. The plates were reinforced with heavy cloth, but her blade pierced it and bit deep. She rolled with a blow from her left and came up with the Erraramm gun braced against her hip. She fired point blank and ran on, damning the size of the ship.

One of the intruders guarded the doorway of the long, narrow room. The other one had Tony pinned at the far end. He had a length of metal in one hand, grabbed from whatever he had been working on, and looked prepared to sell himself dearly, but those things had several feet of reach on him.

She ran straight at the one in the doorway, counting on a moment of surprise at her alien form, the instant it would take to gauge her as a threat. She fired as she ran; nothing. Her gun had run dry or jammed. The Erraramm bellowed and lifted its weapon. She threw herself forward, below the sweep of its arms as it tried to grab her, dropped the useless gun as she rolled past it and came up with the familiar weight of her pistol in her hand. Steve was right behind her, and he could take these things hand to hand.

That left one more in front of her. Her pistol wouldn't do much with the armor and all of that mass between it and the creature's vitals. The Erraramm glanced over its complicated shoulders at her. The instant the muzzle of its gun wavered, Tony went for its knee and drew its attention back toward him.

Maybe it didn't want to fire for fear of hitting something vital to the ship; it swung the long weapon instead. Tony ducked the blow at his head, but the backswing caught his side, where the Erraramm would strike hardest at one of its own kind, and he went down under it. Natasha used that dearly bought second and a half to step in close, find a handhold in the armor and pull herself up, to fire her gun twice at the base of the thing's neck. It roared and turned, its head a mess of dark blood and other fluids—not dead, but probably blind. Behind her, the other Erraramm went down with a thunder of armor against deck plates.

The floor dropped out from under her. She hit the wall hard, nearly dropped her gun, bounced back to her feet as the ship stabilized. Her opponent staggered. She shot it in the knee, shattered the armor there and shot it again, a principle that crossed species just fine. She stepped in close, wrenched the gun out of its hands and vaulted over its prone form to give Cap room to take it down. Tony was on the floor, not moving.

Natasha dropped down next to him. Breathing, pulse okay. He'd hit his head, opened a long gash—shallow and nothing to worry about, bleeding freely. She heard Steve put the other Erraramm down.

“What—” Steve started to ask.

“Concussion. I hope.” She counted off seconds until he blinked. “Tony?”

He made an indistinct noise.

“How many fingers?”

“Six is... not the right answer.”

“Hold still.” She ran careful fingers over his skull. “Can't feel any fracture. You probably have some busted ribs.”

“Go help Hawkeye,” Cap told her. “We need to get out of here now. Tony, just tell me what to do.”

“'Cause that worked so well last time?” He blinked heavily, beat back the hint of panic she could see in his eyes. “That blue panel. What's the readout say?”

Natasha sprinted back to the bridge and dove for her seat as the ship wobbled again. “Keep this grotesque bucket steady. Where's our portal?”

“Doing my best, we're taking hits.” He'd acquired bloody souvenirs of his own from slamming into the console during that last maneuver. They slewed to port, avoiding another attacker. “Portal won't stay steady for more than three seconds.”

“We'll have to time it. Thor, your mark. Give us three cycles to get ready.”

“So it shall be,” he said, watching the instruments as the portal spiraled into existence and faded again. An Erraramm ship hit the energy corona and spun out of control toward the planet.

“Everybody hold on to something,” Clint said.

“Second cycle,” Thor said. “...Mark.”

They threw the ship forward.

*

Four hours after the tower went dark, a helicopter landed on the pad. Bruce went out to meet it.

The rotors would have drowned it out, but no noise from the streets reached so high. He had been surprised by how dispersed the riot was. No single mass of people surged through the streets, but clumps and handfuls here and there. A thrown weapon, a fired gun, a wall of police shields, a drifting cloud of tear gas, a small organized group of Chaos supporters holding homemade signs. He glanced back once at Pepper's still form behind the bullet-proof windows.

 _I can't leave now_ , she said.

_Captain goes down with the ship?_

_Absolutely. We have emergency backup power here, still. Call me as soon as you can._

_I'll try._

That might take a while. He couldn't predict how long it would take him to come back, after the Other Guy took over. He was less afraid than he used to be, that he would never come back at all, but it was still there, like knowing that your parachute might fail. He climbed into the helicopter anyway.

Far below, violence coiled through the streets of New York, and people screamed and died in the darkness. Bruce leaned his head against the heavy glass, felt the vibration of the machinery, and breathed away all other awareness until they landed on the helicarrier. Fury stood on deck, coat flapping in the downdraft. Bruce wasn't sure if his presence was a courtesy or a threat, and he still wasn't sure when they had settled in the small conference room. Just the two of them, monster to monster.

“Dr. Banner.” Nick steepled his fingers together and leaned back. “How certain are you of this information you sent?”

“Absolutely certain.”

Fury studied him for several long minutes. “We'll take the chance. I'd like to know how you happened across this line of inquiry. When you have a moment.”

“Just trying to help.”

Fury smiled his disbelief. “I'm putting a strike team together. You want to go with them?”

“I rather think I've earned that, don't you?”

More staring. Bruce stared back, giving nothing away. JARVIS had trusted him. Whatever Fury planned to say, the intercom buzzed instead.

“Directory Fury? We have radio contact!”

“Who with?”

“The Avengers. At least, that's what they say.”

Bruce filed Fury's surprised look away, something he had never expected to see.

Fury said, “Put them through.” He waited a moment. “Fury here.”

“Thank God,” Steve said. “If this is one of those alternate realities I keep hearing about, don't tell me. We're right where we left from, coming in with an alien ship that mostly works, and we've got wounded. Where do you want us?”

“How big of an alien ship?”

“'Bout the size of a jumbo jet, but it can land on a dime.”

“Meet us at the helicarrier, we'll figure something out. Those of you who can will be heading right out again. Think we've finally tracked down these assholes. I've got Banner here.”

“Good. See you there. Avengers out."  
  


*

First off was Steve, half-carrying Tony, who was covered in blood.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Bruce said. “Where—” At least it prevented any awkwardness about his own penchant for taking off in the middle of the night without good-byes.

“The cut's shallow, but he's got a concussion,” Steve said. “Maybe some cracked ribs. Catch? He's heavier than he looks.”

“Got him.” He glanced at Cap. “Welcome to the club.”

Steve seemed to get his meaning, and grinned. “Welcome home.”

Bruce smiled, just a little, and looked past him. “Everybody else?”

“Natasha's patching up Clint, he swears it's nothing serious. We know where we're going?”

“Yes. How fast is that thing you brought home?”

“A lot faster than it looks. We'll head back out, then, and finish this business.”

“I'll come along for this part.” He kept his voice casual, tamped down the anger. _Just a little bit longer._

“We just got here,” Tony said, not entirely distinctly. “Nap first.”

“No naps allowed,” Bruce said. “ _You_ are not going anywhere. Take your CAT scan like a good boy, and we'll tell you all about it later. Pepper needs you to fix the Tower.”

“Fix it, why does it have to be fixed, what did you do to my tower?”

“ _Later.”_

“Okay, okay, fine.” Tony looked somewhere to the left of Bruce. “Go get 'em, tiger.”

Bruce passed him off to the full-suited medical team as they entered the room, grabbed his own bag, and followed Cap back onto the ship.

“This might be the fugliest thing I have ever seen, flying or otherwise.” Even the parts of it that weren't orange offended his eyes.

Clint rolled his eyes. “Banner, _line_. For God's sake.”

“Oh. Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought.”

“ _Much_ better. Why do I have to do everything around here... where we headed?”

“Rockies, just south of the Canadian border.” He read off the coordinates. The ship moved with no sense of acceleration. “Nice mover, despite its looks.”

“She gets the job done. How've you been?”

“Busy. You?”

“Bored.”

“I... think I hate you,” Bruce said.

Clint cocked an eyebrow at him and grinned, which probably hurt, given the taped-together cut on his chin. “Good to see you, too.” He checked the sensors and the grin went away. “Something coming up fast behind us—what the hell?”

“Friend of Tony's,” Bruce supplied with a glance at the readout. “He's all right.”

“Oh, that guy.” He flipped on the radio. “You learn your manners from Stark? Little warning next time.”

“SHIELD is in no position to talk about manners. Been chasing Chaos the whole time you were gone, you think I'm going to miss this?”

“Welcome to pitch in, since Stark's slacking off.”

“Story of my life,” Jim said. “What—”

“Honestly.” Bruce sighed. “I _don't_ think flying with a concussion would be a good idea.”

“Wimp. ETA fifteen minutes,” Clint announced. “We got a plan, or we doing this the usual way?”

“They're in an underground bunker, no real information on the layout,” Bruce said.

“So, the usual way. That's cool.”

Nearly there, they got a call from Erik Selvig.

“The portal readouts are changing—there's a big one forming, not far from your current location. I don't understand what it's doing. There are other portals forming. One over Austria. One over China.”

Bruce studied the data with a frown. “Those other ones, they're the same as we've been seeing all over North America. This one...?”

“It's nothing like the others, like nothing I've ever seen before,” Erik said. “It's not draining at all, it's pouring power into the system, it's--”

“That's what they were looking for,” Bruce said. “A power source. They want to _create_ a Tesseract.”

“They can't possibly harness that much energy, can't stabilize it!”

“I know.” What had Natasha said, that the Tesseract unleashed could destroy the continent? He had no reason to doubt that. “We need to shut this down.”

“How?”

“Let me make a call.” He closed the line with Selvig and opened a new one, calculations flying through his mind. “JARVIS, we need to shut down the entire grid. Right now. They'll overload the whole thing, cripple it for months at best when they lose control of this.”

With only the slightest hesitation, JARVIS said, “Very well. That will no doubt alert them to your attack.” Also, possibly, alert other people to other things.

“Have to chance it. We're almost there.”

“Commencing shutdown.” For the first time, Bruce heard what he thought might be anxiety in that disembodied voice as it said, “I understand that the team has been recovered. Mr. Stark has not been in communication.”

“He's on the helicarrier. He'll be all right.”

“Thank you, Dr. Banner.”

“Tell Pepper?” No doubt she could some up with some kind of plan to stave off the consequences; she had been doing that for over ten years.

“Of course, doctor.”

He hung up and watched the mountains grow closer, glanced to his left and saw Steve with that raised-eyebrows expression that meant he had followed both conversations, and concurred, and was worried.

“Conference call time.” Clint patched Rhodes in. “I think I can see where we're going.”

“You don't say,” Jim said. “The big blue light? Captain, what's the play?”

“War Machine, target exterior equipment and be ready to contain any hostiles that try to break away. The rest of us hit the ground. Thor's on point. We close the place down.” He looked at Bruce.

“I think I could contribute to that.”

“We might need you to figure out how to shut their system down harmlessly once we get inside.”

“Hitting it hard enough ought to work.” He held Steve's gaze for a long moment, then smiled. “Captain, I'm joking. Of course I'll do it.” He did feel a mild disappointment, but he could live with that. He had lived with a lot of worse things.

“Good. Hawkeye, Widow, you make sure he can work uninterrupted.”

“Target coming up in ten,” Clint said.

“Happy landings.” Jim arrowed down toward the base of the energy beam.

Bruce had watched a lot of footage of the smaller bases going down under attack. This one was different; it had been built in and under a mountain, made to survive the literal destruction of human civilization. Tracks of heavy vehicles led up a narrow valley and disappeared behind metal and rock. A nearby area had been leveled, and on it Bruce caught a glimpse of the equipment that generated the beam, and that Chaos hoped would prove enough to contain and transfigure it. He saw glints of silver in the suddenly swirling thunderheads as Rhodes attacked.

The alien ship landed without grace but in one piece, its bulk wedged in the rocky valley sides. The five of them made it to the ground. The base doors had not been built to withstand Thor in a temper. Lightning struck the ground around the blast shields. He hammered them down in seconds.

Bruce took a slow breath and followed the rest of them inside. This was no worse than going into Manhattan had been. As long as no one actually shot him, he would be fine. There were not actually that many people in the base, it seemed—fifty at most. They had no uniform, but their defenses were organized, and they fought hard. Maybe they realized that planning to kill billions of people in the interests of their utopia was not going to win them any friends. Wherever the team had been, they had a lot of pent-up aggression to get rid of. Bruce watched them mow down Chaos operatives in something approaching awe.

“Clear,” Cap barked, sweeping the main control room. “Thor, let's go hunt out the rest of them. Doctor, your turn.”

Bruce scanned the camera feeds from outside, the readouts from the equipment they had built. Worst case, he figured, he could unplug everything. Tony would be sorry he had missed this. There,he found a monitor with a familiar set of energy readings on it. He busied himself looking for a shutdown mechanism, and then a bullet creased his neck.

The machine gave off sparks as he stared at the cracked monitor. He heard Natasha yell something in Russian.

Clint said, “Don't shoot!” Bruce heard the soft sound of his bow. That didn't make any sense.

Sparks. The overhead lights died—something Thor had done, maybe, deeper in the compound. Bruce touched his neck. No blood, just a burn. That close. Heard his teammates talking.

“He almost shot Bruce!” Natasha sounded furious. Not afraid, not anymore, but angry.

“I remember this guy. He's... he was one of Loki's. Don't kill him. He knows things. He's not going anywhere now.”

Bruce exhaled once more, knelt down and pulled the plug. He wasn't going anywhere, either.

*

SHIELD came in an hour later, with three jets that dropped off teams to handle the cleanup and take away the surviving members of χαός. By morning the place would be swarming with agents, doing the things they did best. They had gotten the lights back on, first thing. Bruce watched them from an out of the way corner of the main control room. 

“I always think this is more tiring than the rest of it,” Steve said, leaning on the table beside him. He had splashed the blood and dirt off his face, but his uniform was a mess; they all were.

“Certainly takes longer.”

“I guess this is going to keep happening. Genies aren't known for going back into bottles.”

“And we don't even get a wish out of the deal.” _The world is filling up with people who can't be controlled_ , Fury had said, and he might have been giving Tony a rather pointed look at the time, but he hadn't been wrong. “From what Clint and Natasha said, sounds like you had plenty of excitement at your end of things.” 

“It was that.” They watched for a while. Steve knew how to sit still. “Thanks for looking for us.”

Bruce shrugged and fiddled with his bracelet, then glanced over at him with a half-smile. “I'm told that we do this kind of thing.”

  
  


The End

(until the next plot bunny strikes)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, okay, this ended being a lot longer than I thought it was going to be. Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me as I sneak my way into this whole fandom thing (I guess I'm ankle-deep now). I absolutely appreciate all of the encouragement I've gotten here!


End file.
